principles to the actual status of the people so as to reach the highest possible amount of practical efficiency in securing the ends of justice and of virtue. * * * * * The brief analysis and treatment of the _civil code_ here attempted will follow mainly the same order of subjects which appears in the law of Sinai; thus: I. Crimes against God: 1. Idolatry;――2. Perjury;――3. Presumptuous sins;――4. Violations of the Sabbath;――5. Blasphemy;――6. Magic. II. Crimes against parents and rulers (Fifth commandment). III. Crimes against the person and life (Sixth commandment). IV. Crimes against chastity (Seventh commandment). V. Crimes against property; laws respecting property (Eighth commandment). VI. Crimes against reputation; violations of truth (Ninth commandment). VII. Hebrew servitude. VIII. Judicial procedure. IX. Punishments. * * * * * I. Crimes against God: 1. _Idolatry._ The laws against idolatry included both the professed worship of the true God by means of images, and the worship of other gods. As the law of Sinai forbade both these practices with no special discrimination between them, so did the “statutes and judgments”――the law apparently holding it of small account to attempt any discrimination. In the case of the golden calf (Ex. 32) Aaron having more knowledge of the true God than the body of the people, may have thought only of worshiping the Lord (“To-morrow is a feast to the Lord”); but the people bringing their notions from their Egyptian life, may have had no thought beyond the calf, and so may have worshiped it as their God. Plainly the professed worship of God by means of images was a perpetual temptation to let slip all just conceptions of God and to worship images only, or some other object than God. No discrimination in point of penalty appears in the law. Both forms seem to have been condemned and punished with no attempt to discriminate between them. Individual idolaters, after careful examination and clear proof of guilt, were stoned――the witnesses casting the first stone (Deut. 17: 2–7). No man might allow himself to be seduced into the worship of other gods――no, not by a brother, or a son, or a wife, or by friend dear as his own soul, but must expose the sin of his seducer and spare not his very life (Deut. 13: 6–11). A city given to idolatry, if the case be proven, must be utterly destroyed and made a perpetual desolation (Deut. 13: 12–16). The statutes were absolutely sweeping against any possible form of similitude, image, or representation, made for an object of worship; and also against the worship of the heavenly bodies――a form of idolatry both ancient and widely diffused (Deut. 4: 13–19).――――To guard them against temptation in the social line, they were forbidden to eat in idolatrous festivals (Ex. 34: 15). Apparently many special usages were forbidden because of their associations with idol worship (Lev.